John Kitson

John was one of the original IS students at Marietta College. He really believed in the tool sets that the major had to offer and the variety of jobs he could do with these skills.

John graduated in May, but had a job offer lined up in February with Teamwork Solutions. Just a few months out of college, he started to work on Lotus Notes-based applications that run the internal business processes for clients such as Burger King, Abercrombie & Fitch, Chrysler, Nationwide Insurance and others.

John has passed the IBM/Lotus certification exam and become an IBM/Lotus Certified Professional and continues to work on a variety of projects that require knowledge and learning in Java, JavaScript, XML, HTML, VB, LotusScript, and Lotus Formula Language.

Advantages of attending MCIS:

Favorite MCIS memory:
"Failing MIS 220 the first time I took it. I scored a 60/50 on my e-portfolio. I had worked on in for about a day. I had been building sites for about 8 years at that point, so it was a breeze. Then I was late on the next project and just didn't do the one after that. By the time that the final came around, I could ace it and it still wouldn't have mattered because I didn't show up to a third of the class. i learned that it doesn't matter how much you know if you don't show up. It really applied to a lot of my life and turned me around and into an IS major."

How has MCIS benefited your career?
"It really had put me in a different class of entry level workers. In the business world, I've seen alot of purely business brains, and then I have seen alot of purely tech brains and being able to make systems that not only work, but work for the people using them is the hardest task. I work on-site about 20 hours a week just dealing with ways that users can circumvent systems. There are constant upgrades to try to make the system think most like a human while still working as an efficient machine."

Advice for current or prospective MCIS students:
"Never be afraid to ask questions. That is the one thing everyone at my office says. If you were expected to know everything, you'd be making and doing a lot more than you currently are. They want you to grow and they expect you to. Try to figure things out, but if you can't - ask. You are a team of people working toward a common goal. Remember that. Make sure to ask questions, but try with all your might to not ask the same question twice."

Sample projects you have worked on:
"The two projects I have worked on are:

which features secure user authentication and many different sub processes. This is an e-commerce site with a pseudo CMS that allows the management to track inventory, export and import sales from Amazon, SHOP, and other sites they also feature products on. This site receives information from various third party vendors to display information dynamically depending on certain situations and prior user behavior.

which implements a more true background CMS for the Franklin County Courts. The site enables Judges and other users to edit their own pages after logging in. It also gives a site admin the ability to accept or decline the changes before going into production and provides a base model for future websites. Intellectual Property is a big thing. Enables us to use this code as a base for another site with minor changes and a design change.

I also updated workflow applications to better fit changing companies needs. Workflow applications are our specialty as a company. It enables document flow that would've taken days or weeks to pass through an offices, or through worldwide communication to be approved, denied, held, returned, edited, and any other actions you could think to do with an issue or request. Companies use these workflow applications and I have worked on them for payroll, expense request, authority, spam filters, website blocking, human resource files, actionable items, incident reports, etc. Some of these projects actually are a lot like the P&G project that Professor Wang had us do in the MIS 220 class on a much larger scale."